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Thursday, April 16, 2009

Tip # 31

Actually the thirty other ones are in my head somewhere!

Les trente autres trucs sont en quelque part dans ma tête.

This one is all about shaving off thin slivers of clay from a sheet of clay.You can use this tip for the mokume gane or the mica shift techniques.For making a mokume gane, you usually stack up different colours of clay laminate them into one sheet and then make an impression upon this sheet with a texture or other texturing tools. As for the mica shift, you use a metallic clay (gold works best for me) and impress textures on the clay sheet. To get the mokume gane effect, you have to shave off a very thin layer of clay and the colours in the underlying layers will appear. For the mica shift, I think that breaking the surface tension will bring out the mica shift effect (or 3-d or hidden image) to the surface. I love playing around with both of these techniques.

Now for the tip which works for me. Instead of curving your blade to do the shaving of thin slivers, I like to curve the polymer clay sheet and use a straight blade. To give my clay sheet a gentle curve, I place it on a large jar (or it could be an ice cream container). Why do I like this method?: it is because the curve is always the same, and which makes the shaving part more precise and easy: more control in the shaving process. Here is a picture of my usual set up. I usually use both hands to hold my blade but my other one was taking a picture....

Presently, I am working on book covers for a class that I will be giving at our annual polymer clay gathering in Morrisburg Ontario and I need samples of different stages of completion. I have been playing around with the layering/texturing technique which gave me the idea to share this tip.C'est en préparant mon cours d'assemblage de livre que m'est venue l'idée de partager ce truc car récemment j'ai travaillé ces techniques.

It is possible to be more creative with this and bring it to another level. On the back cover of the blade holder below, I played around with the texture and the result after it was shaved. Many possibilities lurking around the corner don't you think?Il est possible de pousser la créativité encore plus loin en combinant la texture originale avec le résultat de la découpe. C'est ce que j'ai fait sur le couvercle d'un porte-lames. Qui sait, vous aurez peut-être le goût d'explorer!!!